Vision with RoboRealm

[JonHylands]

So, I have basically decided on using RoboRealm as the vision pre-processor for MicroRaptor. They have some very cool stuff built in, including the Sobel edge filter, which I used to make this short video:

http://www.bioloid.info/tiki/tiki-download_file.php?fileId=74

Its amazing what you can do with plug-n-play software now...

- Jon

ps - if you can't view the above movie because of OS issues, I found a neat website that converts between many video formats for free: http://media-convert.com/convert/

[Hal9000]

I can't see the video properly due to restrictions for plugins on this Uni pc.

However, I was wondering, with RoboRealm, can you look at multiple robots and do processing with them? (Much like with the RoboSoccer competition?)

[JonHylands]

You can do pretty much whatever you like with RoboRealm - it works with one or more cameras being plugged into a PC.

- Jon

[Admin]

have you ever gotten the blob detection to work with roborealm?

cant seem to get it to locate/label blobs . . .

[JonHylands]

Have you seen this:

http://www.roborealm.com/tutorial/color_object_tracking_2/slide010.php

I personally haven't tried this, but it looks interesting.

- Jon

[Hal9000]

Hey, yeah, they've added some new stuff since I last looked

You know this part of the site:

http://www.roborealm.com/help/Lego_NXT.php

For people who have used NXT, what does comminicating using a mailbox mean?

Does this mean, say if you prohrammed the NXT using Java instead of LabVIEW (the programming environment that comes with the NXT), then send some commands based on the outcomes of the webcam, then would this still work? After the mailboxing, then can you 'close' the mailbox, effectively, letting the robot continue with its own program?

[Admin]

i think his software is still buggy.

my method (see included black and white image, blob_find2.png) gets rid of 99% of the noise and is very robust, meaning i dont need to tweak it for it to work. but for some odd reason, the center of mass module only tracks the blob when it covers 80%+ of the space. otherwise it just hangs in some random location . . .

so i redid it using the roborealm method (see black and red image). the center of mass then works, but that method doesnt get rid of all the noise, making the center of mass mostly wrong.

ill email the guy . . .

oh, and the image is me moving a red object around in my kitchen . . .

edit:
so i read the documentation some more, and found this:
"Note that based on the way this COG is calculated brighter pixels will exert more pull on the final COG location than darker pixels."
so applying the negative to the image, the center of mass works better, but still is way off too much. (see blob_find3.png)

[JonHylands]

I don't know why you're having such trouble...

I set up something simple:

http://www.bioloid.info/tiki/tiki-browse_image.php?imageId=132
http://www.bioloid.info/tiki/tiki-browse_image.php?imageId=133
http://www.bioloid.info/tiki/tiki-browse_image.php?imageId=134
http://www.bioloid.info/tiki/tiki-browse_image.php?imageId=135

Here's a movie of me moving it around...

http://www.bioloid.info/tiki/tiki-download_file.php?fileId=76

- Jon

[Admin]

ok I did it your way and it works . . . but it was still noisy and often jumped. it also didnt always track the whole object, but just part of it, leaving error.

turns out my method works much better if i just added a blob filter and image blur to it, and now I got it working 100% with not a single jump - not even when the object goes out of the screen. it also tracks the whole object and not just part of it.

see image

jonhylands, try this .robo file and tell me it isnt amazing
http://www.societyofrobots.com/downloads/robo_realm_configs/red_blob_locator.robo